Various ways to use social media as a facilitator or trainer

This is a blogpost written for a half-day workshop for facilitators with Sibrenne Wagenaar.
We thought of starting with a blogpost because it helps us think about the topic of the workshop, it is a light way of starting online, and it gives the chance for others to look over our shoulders (and give tips?).

More and more often we meet trainers and facilitators who are working mainly face-to-face and would like to use the opportunity of social media to facilitate more online because it may enhance the quality of your trajectory. There are many different ways in which you can do so. A great model has been developed by Jane Hart: how to use social media in e-learningtrajectories:



We believe you may also use this model to think about how to use social media in face-to-face learning trajectories.

(1) Wrap-around model: socials aspects are added as extra element to organise trainer- en peer support. An example is using Yammer or Twitter so that participants can have contacts in between face-to-face events, but the core is in the face-to-face.

(2) Integrated model: social aspecten are integrated with the content of the training. Social media form an integral part of the learning trajectory. For instance, when you have an online community platform (e.g. Ning or LinkedIn group) to start exchanging online related to the topics of the trajectory.

(3) Collaboration model: sociaal learning and collaboration are at the basis of the design of the trajectory. The content and topics are co-created in collaboration with the participants. You may be using a combination of social media that are complementary: Yammer for support and contact, Scrumble for brainstorming, a wiki to collect information and documents, a unique hashtag in delicious to build a joint library. It is becoming more of a learning network or learning community.

As you can see: from the wrap-around model to collaboration social media is playing an increasingly central role. Jane Hart warns us that you should use the first model with caution. You need a good reason to use social learning as an add-on, otherwise it is very difficult to make a 'wrap-around' model workable. The strength of the second model is a seamless integration of online and f2f learning. So we advocate to analyse and use the power of both modalities in the design of a learning process. Such that f2f and online learning are mutually reinforcing. Find the right connection between online and face-to-face learning interventions to use the power of various media. In the third model, social media is the basis for learning and participation from a social-constructivist vision.

Important to remember is that the use of social media matches a different perspective on learning as compared to some types of training and 'elearning1.0', focusing on co-creation, self-directed learning by participants and the importance of interaction and conversation between participants. Social media encourage networking, sharing ideas and experiences, collaborate and hence connect so well with this vision. This also means that your role as facilitator is different in the collaboration model from the wrap-around and integrated model. In the third model, you're more of a 'tutor as an equal member of the group learning', your role is to help and create a 'powerful learning environment'. This does not mean that social media can not be used in trainings designed from a different perspective on learning, just that you may have to be aware of this. Jane Hart's model may help to think about the role of social media in your own training or learning trajectory and making choices therein as facilitator. How central will social media be?

Another model that closely resembles the one of Jane Hart is by Dave Wilkins. He distinguishes the embedded model, wrapped model and community model. His blog post is worth a read. conversations?

We look around and see a wide variety of learning interventions in which social media can play an important role. We would like to make a distinction between small and large-scale operations and a between one-off learning interventions or prolonged interventions. In a short workshop you will make other considerations when choosing social media usage than a long term project or network, where you can invest in learning to work with a wiki. You may not want to invest in that for a half-day session.

This brings us to the following overview of a number of possible interventions that can facilitate learning using social media. On the horizontal axis on the far left learning activities designed for a small group of participants (eg a training with 12 people), and the right scale actions (think of a conference with 80 people). Vertically, we distinguish between one-time participation (a 1-day workshop, seminar or conference) and longer-term learning, such as a one year learning trajectory or a learning network.






The type of learning interventions will affect how you will make use of social media. Though you can still be very creative and there is no clear guide for doing A, B, C and using tool A, B, C. Some examples:

• Getting-to-know eachother online: You facilitate a training on brainlearning and want to engage all participants in advance in the subject. You may do so through an online survey, a blog post with the question to participants to share their questions and expectations or invite participants to tweet about their experiences related to brain learning, using a unique hash tag for this group.
• Conference2.0: You are involved in a major conference on leadership and want to use social media during the conference as a kind of "back channel". Through Twitterhashtag you stimulate people to share insights and questions and a twitterfountain is on screen during the day; visible to everyone. You'll also make a number of flipvideos (short interviews) during the day that you'll make available online.
• Online follow-up: You believe strongly in the principle of repetition for something new to take root. You will send participant after the training a regular text message containing a question or reminder. Or invite them to stay in touch through Twitter.
• Webconferences: You work in a multinational company and you want to organize something on the subject of projectmanagement. There is no budget to organise an major international gathering on this issue. Instead you decide to organise a two-days web-conference. You start and end with an open chat session and organizes various workshops during the two days of 1-1.5 hours with guest speakers from inside and outside the organization.
• Hybrid learning trajectory: You work for a long time with a group of project managers and have an online learning platform (Ning, Moodle, Elgg) designed to promote learning in between the face-to-face sessions. Experts can play a substantive role, participants will work online and give each other feedback on products, there are threads running on the application of new information into their own work practice. The online exchange is as important as the face-to-face exchanges.
  
• E-coaching: You have worked for some time with a group of trainees f2f and the meetings are over. Each trainee returns to his duty station and you guide them through e-coaching in applying the lessons learned in practice. For this purpose you use Skype, email and google.docs.
• Online Learning Network: You want to help people blog. To this end you have an online textbook written with 31 which participants can work. In parallel you have set up a community where users can meet, write feedback on eachother's blog posts and get tips from you as a coach. You facilitate the network to grow and innovate.
• Blog fair: You want to stimulate thinking about using social media by encouraging non-profit organizations to document and reflect while most of the contacts already have a blog. You invite them every month to write a blogpost about an inspirational question and make the results available via Twitter and your blog.
• Online community: All over the world policy makers, researchers and practitioners are working on a new approach to forest regeneration. You use Twitter and Ning to foster an online community to exchange in order to stimulate innovation, but also send someone to a conference and ask him to blogging about it. You make the blog accessible within the online community.

Stimulating self-directed learning

We had quite some confusion this week going on about the concept of 'networked learning' during an interesting day with learning professionals. For some this is really about networking online through social media and learning a lot by connecting with other professionals online. For others this is about face-to-face networks focussing on learning together from practice, like a community of practice. I guess it doesn't matter as long as you are clear what you are refering to. Be clear about the definition you use. A definition I liked a lot was: 'discussing difficulties with others, mostly during lunch'. You can simply imagine how this person has the brightest insights by lunching with a group of (self-chosen) colleagues :). Here's a graph with some dimensions of learning networks. If you talk about a closed, face-to-face, problem-solving network you talk about a different animal than when you talk about a fluid twitter community around a certain hashtag. Which is OK, as long as you don't talk about best practices and set fixed steps to nurture these networks. In that case it is good to be more specific. Some people clearly felt that learning networks should be organic and self-organised. I disagree because I think you can do quite a lot to support and grow healthy learning networks. I like to quote Barab: "you can not design communities of practice, but you can design for communities of practice".

Informal and formal learning was also part of the confusing language and I got to realize this is not a helpful language after all. Formal learning gets labelled as 'directive', informal learning makes people think they can't do anything to stimulate it. Though I also say I focus on 'informal learning' I will try to use a clearer language in the future. Learning is not informal or informal, activities can be more or less formal (and I'm sure people using the term want to express that). An example: my personal question is currently how I could learn handy things for my Mac computer. I could learn this through a classroom course, I could learn this by asking questions on Forum on online communities. I could also learn this by going to colleagues who have a mac and are willing to share. The learning is roughly the same process, the activities are participate in differ.

What can be more or less formalized and structured is the organisation of learning activities. On the one hand, a self-structured process whereby nothing is organised. On the other hand a well prepared and structured curriculum. Both have advantages, in a self-structured process the person is fully in control and takes ownership of his/her learning process. In a curriculum people have thought deeply about the field and what should be part of the content. Often trainings are put forward in a caricature whereby the participants only receive information. In reality many trainings also try to link to the questions and experiences of the participants. In between is the interesting area where learning professionals can be creative to stimulate participant-led learning. You can nurture learning communities. Stimulate professionals to blog. Add a coach to a workteam. You can connect people through twitter hashtags. Those are organised activities that try to combine the best of both worlds.

By the way I just found an article about 'emergent learning' and'prescriptive learning'. Might be better terms than formal and informal learning? What do you think?


For people interested in the presentation I can include my prezi. Though the text is Dutch, it is pretty visual too.

Netwerkleren on Prezi

Facilitating networks and communities: balancing between design and emergent

I live in an area which is relatively newly populated (10 years old) and the shopping center has been opened only last year. Unfortunately most of the roads are designed with cars in mind, rather than cyclists, overlooking the needs of cyclists and people walking. As a result you can see people taking their own roads... (this picture was taken before the snow, currently this path is white from snow and ice!)

I once read a story about architects on a campus waiting to see where the students pass and then building their pathways, rather than designing pathways and then making sure the students stay on those paths. (forgot where..)

Facilitators of networks and communities have a similar dilemma: you have to design and lead, but you also need to see what emerges. The natural self-organisation tendency of networks and communities is very strong. It doesn't mean however that nothing can be designed upfront, but find a right balance.

End of last year I had to write a plan and budget for two networks without really knowing a lot what the pathways of these networks are going to be. I ended up trying to create some flexibility to be able to respond to new pathways. For instance, instead of budgeting for the current online platform a network is using, also take care of other tools that may be needed.

It may also be a task of a facilitator to notice the new pathways.. currently there are many developments on Twitter. Maybe your network is taking a new path on Twitter?

PS. there are two bridges that are going to be redesigned.. the design of the bridge didn't take into account security in traffic and created dangerous situations. I wonder if this wouldn't have been foresee-able and this is not a case of emergent insight but overlooking known facts...

Designing an online and face-to-face learning trajectory

I co-facilitated an online trajectory about dairy development with dairy practitioners (for Heifer in collaboration with Agri-ProFocus) before a face-to-face learning event in the Netherlands. As the facilitator team of 3 we took an hour to look back at the process and formulate our lessons. I blogged it on the icollaborate blog, but thought I can cross-blog it here too. We used a Ning platform (private network with public face) to convene the participants. A huge advantage of the online process is that we have a secured continuous attention and more networking opportunities for the dairy specialists. We are now investigating options to continue as a network. In terms of impact on learning together I think this is huge compared to simply organising a face-to-face event. So here's the account of what we tried to achieve, what we achieved and what we'd do the same or differently next time.

What we tried to achieve:
The organizing team of three felt starting online could help with the following 4 things:

1. Get to know each other so that a positive climate is created for learning together
2. Better content-wise preparation for the learning event with the participants by sharing and discussing case studies online before the event
3. Help to organize the logistics, in particular transport
4. Disseminate and validate the draft toolbox developed by Heifer

A team of three facilitators was formed with a variety of skills; one was a dairy specialist from Heifer (not familiar with online exchange), one process facilitator from Agri-ProFocus and one consultant online facilitation (external). As always, time for preparation was short and the team met only once for about 2 hours to get to know each other, plan and divide tasks – and actually started the next day!

The design
There was one month left before the learning event, so that was the maximum time that could be used online. A dairy and development Ning platform was put together and a group of roughly 100 registered people from all over the globe were invited to the platform. The team chose to start parallel discussions: (a) the cases, (b) a thread of introductions, (c) an online game (two truths and a lie), (d) to ask for learning expectations and (e) logistics. The team agreed to communicate via mails and skype instant messaging and try to react within 24 hours to each others questions. Every week a message was sent out to all registered participants on the platform, tips from the facilitators were put on the homepage and updated when necessary and we made sure to welcome all participants with a personal note.

What happened?
Roughly half of the invited people responded (50) and signed up for the platform. Immediately, they started to invited others working in dairy development, so we reached a total of 94 participants on the Ning. The cases and introductions were very active threads and all cases received comments from people who had read them carefully. We noticed that we had to invest to get a first reaction to a question, after which more people followed. Almost half of the ‘Ningers’ could not participate in the event in the Netherlands. That brought us to the idea to make short videos to post back for the others who were not present. Unfortunately this person fell ill and nobody could take over. Therefore summaries were made and posted back to the Ning. The online facilitation took each of us 12-20 hours of online facilitation over the course of 4 weeks.

In the evaluation 62% of the participants in the learning event indicated they logged onto the online platform. The comments were appreciative: “It got me involved in the subject”, “I contributed and learned a lot”, “Everybody has a chance” and “Good preparation, great introduction, up-to-date information”

What did we achieve?
The online participation and discussions far exceeded the expectations of the organizing team, given the fact that most invitees are busy and not familiar with this type of online exchange. The case presenters on the learning event noted that people went deeply into the cases and they were able to go beyond trying to understand the case to a real analysis. There was a open, safe atmosphere which allowed people to be provocative and give constructive criticisms without others feeling attacked.

It is hard to measure the effect on the networking on the Ning. The online exchange allowed some acquaintance and dairy people are already well networked. Both factors helped to create a good atmosphere. Many people recognized faces from the ning and it probably helped to reduce anxiety levels because people had a clearer idea of whom to expect.

Most people carpooled- but it is hard to say whether that was a result of the ning. Only one person offered the carpool through the ning. We didn’t get a clear picture of the transport needs online. The draft toolbox was disseminated during the last week. Unfortunately we don’t have data how often it was downloaded (and less how often it was read).

What would we do the same and what to do differently if we’d had to organize it again?
We’re quite content and enthusiastic about the results, so we’d basically do the same thing we did. Investing in welcoming people, making sure a first person reacts online to questions, tips from the facilitator on the homepage and weekly summaries for all seemed to work well for this group of people with little online exchange experience. The focus on cases worked very well for the dairy professionals because it allowed them to go straight to the heart of their profession. The combination of skills within the team worked out well, as did the weekly or so skype teleconferences within the team. And of course part of the success can be contributed to the cases that appealed to the participants. Things to improve:

• Plan enough time to make summaries of the ning discussions as an input for the face-to-face event. Since the reactions exceeded our expectations, making summaries was time consuming.
• The icebreaker is good because it is low threshold activity for some participants. However, the ‘two truths and a lie’ was too complex. An easier icebreaker might get more reactions. One participant recognized the exercise from a face-to-face event, so you might go for a familiar icebreaker and translate it online.
• Don’t combine two questions in one thread. One of the two questions might be ignored. Be very clear what your question is.
• Navigation remained difficult. The lesson is to give priority to a very clear structure. However, for people who are new to ning or other online platforms the experience may remain chaotic, it is a learning curve for the participants. So it might also be good to allow more time for learning to navigate the online space, both for participants and facilitators!. An idea for participants may be to organize an online scavenger hunt on the forum or a teleconference for those who feel lost?
• It might work better to focus attention of participant to plan case discussions one after the other rather than simultaneously. For instance, 2 cases per week. This helps to focus everybody’s attention. In our case, the period of 4 weeks was short for that because it takes more than a week to get a substantial amount of participants online.
• Install analytics (eg. Google analytics) or ensure downloads via other sites that monitor the number of downloads so that you can monitor those data. For instance, you can upload a document on scribd.com and link to it on the Ning.

Building healthy communities

Richard McDermott write the cover story of inside knowledge on the topic of building healthy communities. A three years in-depth assessment was undertaken in a dozen companies to look at mature communities. Interestingly, old thinking about CoPs was that goals and deliverables woud inhibit people's openess and that communities needed to evolve on their own over time. However, the study found that many communities without organisational support fade away. Most of the healthy communities are more like 'official' organisational structures.

Key characteristics of healthy communities were consistent across the various industries studied. Following are some characteristics:

• Most active communities are also highly valued by their organisations
• Projects, goals and deliverables give a community something specific to organise around
• Healthy communities have enthusiastic, active, energised leaders, spending between 10-25% of their time engaged in community activities
• Leader activities include facilitating meetings, handling logistics, networking among members and networking among sponsors
• Healthy communities have a core group of active members
• They have a clear sense of making progress, even if goals are informally formulated, which energises the community
• Healthy communities are far from the margins of a company even though management attention can easily inhibit community development.
• Some communities are developing the organisation's knowledge assets

I think this is interesting, as I also encounter the belief that communities should be left alone in organisations. What I observe is that this marginalizes them, because there is no attention for learning from the community of practice. For inter-organisational communities (as I'm now mostly engaged with) it is even less likely that an organisation is closely involved. Though this may create the space for authentic development, is can also be interpreted as lack of interest in the domain of the community. Good to read the whole paper, it is not very long and gives a very pragmatic insight in communities within companies.

Conversations in communities of practice

I had dinner with a friend and suddenly we were discussing how to do the laundry. It made us laugh because we never discuss how to do the laundry. Basically over dinner, we always cover our work (and what doesn't work in work), work/life balance, gossiping over other friends, children and sometimes a bit of politics. Did you ever notice that with certain friends or colleagues you always cover the same topics, though with variations on how you cover it? I once saw the play 'Painicilline' by Alex d'Electrique where 3 scientists are nominated for a price and waiting for the result. It takes long and you see a pattern of conversation between the 3 men that gets repeated and repeated. The same topics come up and get discussed in just a slightly different way.

In communities of practice, the same phenomenon occurs. The same topics are covered and others become 'undiscussables' or simple 'not discussed'. A facilitator can play a role in introducing new subjects of conversation, by changing the medium, inviting new participants or inviting new experts to interact with the community.

Exploring the language of facilitation

I bumped into a fascinating article about the 'language of facilitation'. By coincidence, one of the authors works for Anecdote, a company with a great weblog. The researchers wanted to find out what it means to speak 'facilitatively', from the premise that it is through the act of talking and speaking that sense is made and action enacted (Weick). They talk about face-to-face facilitation, not online facilitation.

To speak facilitatively means:
1. saying something that invites more thought
2. is behavioural and incorporates elements of body language
3. an attitude style emerging in language
4. using engaging and opening words like 'exploring', 'possibilities' rather than closing words like 'givens'.

A highlight to check out are the metaphors that facilitators use to describe their style of facilitation, most using movement with the elements, like 'flight of an autumn leaf' or 'sailing, going with the flow'. (too fluid for me by the way!)

A major conclusion of the article is that verbal and non-verbal communication of a facilitator should be in congruence, to ensure authenticity and show genuine curiosity and openness, otherwise the facilitation speech becomes a learned technique (my addition). There is an implicit understanding amongst facilitators of what it means to speak facilitatively, opening up discussions to become dialogues.

You can read through the lines, that the definition of a facilitator is someone who guides a discussion and is in front of the group or at least has a special, designated role. The definition of facilitator is a little shallow, but basic. What he/she does are things like providing a climate of trust, being neutral, ensuring clarity and encouraging inclusiveness. When you think of a facilitator of a community of practice the language of facilitation may be important too, but in my opinion you'd need to bring along a lot more like knowledge about communities of practice and the domain, and ability to read what's going on in terms of community, domain and practice development. Would be interesting to do a similar research what a facilitator of a community of practice 'does'. Similarly, in a group, I'd expect the facilitator to read group dynamics and try and intervene or feed back observations.

For the Dutch speaking people, there is an interesting article by Julien Hafmans in Dutch about 'vrijplaatsen'. She argues that it is interesting to share the facilitation role with all participants, since we all have the capacity to summarize, ask questions, listen, probe. So not one facilitator would speak 'facilitatively', we would all speak 'facilitately'.